Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Anton De Pasquale couldn’t hide his surprise after the rank outsider fended off Supercars heavyweight Matt Payne to nab provisional pole at The Bend 500.
The Team 18 driver will be the last driver to have a solo attempt in Saturday’s top-10 shootout after nailing a time of one minute and 16.271 seconds in qualifying.
De Pasquale pipped Grove Racing star Matt Payne by 0.0069 seconds at the South Australian track, followed by 2025 grand finalist Kai Allen in third.
Triple Eight’s series leader Broc Feeney qualified fourth, while defending The Bend 500 champion Brodie Kostecki was sixth-fastest in the Dick Johnson Racing car.
None of the Toyota drivers could finish in the top 10, with reigning champion Chaz Mostert trailing Erebus rookie Jobe Stewart by just 0.030 seconds to finish 11th.
De Pasquale, who is sharing the car with Lee Holdsworth for the endurance race, will be looking to nab his second pole of the season en route to a third win.
“It’s good to make the shootout. That’s the first tick of the day,” De Pasquale told Fox Sports.
“I wasn’t that confident leading in, had a crack at it in practice and was a fair way off it.
“We tuned that up, and the car was a lot better, so sort of a little bit surprised to be standing here.
“We still got a bit of work to do with the race car.”
Payne narrowly avoided a massive collision with Walkinshaw TWG Racing’s Ryan Wood late in qualifying.
Wood was flying out of pit lane and moved to the inside avoid Payne, only for the Grove star to move in the same direction.
The near-incident forced Wood to abandon his last-gasp effort to make the shootout, settling for a finish in 14th.
“Just a messy session,” Wood said.
“I felt like I was on a decent lap, and then there was a bit of gamesmanship while I was doing my lap, obviously, with what happened out of the pit lane.
“So sorry to those boys, but they know how hard it is when you’re leaving the lane to see.”
Payne added: “I think that was just the really weird timing of it, and he obviously committed and I was already committing.
“It was pretty heart-stopping, but we’re okay. We got out of it.”
Chevrolet teams were forced to reduce their rear wing angle on Saturday as part of the sport’s parity rules after the Camaros topped Friday’s three practice sessions.
The change came after Supercars enacted a small aero increase to the Camaro front undertray tunnel width before this weekend.
THE BEND 500 QUALIFYING RESULTS:
1. Anton De Pasquale (Team 18)
2. Matt Payne (Grove Racing)
3. Kai Allen (Grove)
4. Broc Feeney (Triple Eight Race Engineering)
5. Zach Bates (Matt Stone Racing)
6. Brodie Kostecki (Dick Johnson Racing)
7. Thomas Randle (Tickford Racing)
8. Jayden Ojeda (PremiAir Racing)
9. Cam Waters (Tickford)
10. Jobe Stewart (Erebus Motorsport)
